


Other Ocean

by IanMuyrray



Series: Muy's OtherOutlanderTales [4]
Category: Outlander & Related Fandoms, Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Angst, Book 7: An Echo in the Bone, Canon Compliant, F/M, Near Death, missing moment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-25
Updated: 2018-09-25
Packaged: 2019-07-12 10:51:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15993665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IanMuyrray/pseuds/IanMuyrray
Summary: Ian is dying and asks Jenny what she plans to do after he passes.





	Other Ocean

**Author's Note:**

> Anonymous said: How did Jenny decide to leave Lallybroch one Ian had died?
> 
>  
> 
> _“And ye’d leave Ian?” he [Jamie] asked._  
>     
>  _She made a small noise in her throat. Her hand lay against her breast still, and at this she pressed it flat, fierce against her heart._
> 
> _“Ian’s with me,” she said, and her back straightened in defiance of the fresh-dug grave. “He’ll never leave me, nor I him.”_
> 
>  
> 
> \- _An Echo in the Bone,_ Chapter 84, “The Right of It”

**Lallybroch, 1777**

 

Ian was not what he once was.

He lay on his back, the bedclothes tangled around his waist. He slept naked - he always had, no matter the weather. Early on in their marriage, she had laughed at him for it, not seeing what a familiar comfort his body would become to her, how often she would turn to him on cold nights, how he would always sigh and open his arms to her without waking. She knew if she leaned over him she’d see the peg he used to get around leaning against the sideboard, resting within easy reach, awaiting daybreak.

He had always been lean and wiry, but now - she ran delicate fingertips over his protruding ribs, the crests and valleys on his chest - it was different. Imprisonment and English interrogation had left their mark on him, leeched much of him away over the years.  Jenny withdrew her hand and studied him, his body bathed in orange and blue, firelight fighting the depth of moonlight. The dimness of light must be accentuating the weight he’d lost, she reasoned, trying to hold her grief at bay. The lines of his body blurred, the gaps and sharpness filling and softening with how she’d known him, like a blacksmith pouring molten metal into a mold.

Here in bed, with the farm asleep, things were simple. No need to put up a brave front for their children or grandchildren. Here, they wept, raged, laughed, made love, or sat in silence. Death and its separation - no matter how temporary - eked ever closer, but the walls of their bedroom, and the four posts of their bed, insulated them from its violence and pain.   
  


It was a quiet night, a chilly night, and with the whistle of wind against a window, Jenny shuddered.

“Dinna look at me like that, Jenny,” he said, his voice oddly alert for a man woken from sleep, “I’m no’ dead yet.”

She planted an open palm against his chest, feeling for the beat of his heart, the fullness of air in his lungs with the precious draw of breath. “I know,” she whispered, and met his eye.

There was a stillness in the air, like the crest of a yawn before it falls. Days had been sliding by, turning into months, years, and Ian’s persistent cough never waned. It wasted him, sapped his strength until he was reduced to sitting in armchairs under knitted blankets, watching farmwork from inside. It was his worst nightmare, to be trapped, to feel useless.

Jenny’s hand drifted down to Ian’s right leg, feeling the half limb for the wholeness that it was; his missing limb, a reminder of loss and ache, but also recovery and adaptation. She gave an involuntary squeeze to his upper thigh and closed her eyes. Hot tears welled over onto her cheeks.

“ _Mo chridhe_ ,” came Ian’s whisper, and she felt the bed shift as he sat up and gathered her to him. She leaned into his body, her arms holding him tight against her. He was frail, but he would not break. His chest was lightly dusted with hair and she nuzzled her nose and cheek into it, taking comfort in its familiarity. He stroked her hair and she wept.

At Ian’s touch, her fears and pain dimmed to the accustomed numbness, snuffing out like the end of a candle’s wick. There was an ugly irony in his soothing of her tears; she shut her eyes firm against it. With one last squeeze, she released him, sitting up and wiping at her eyes with the back of her hands. She sniffed.

“I’ve written to Jamie,” she muttered, struggling to gather her loosened reins. Suspended in the air was the unspoken, palpable absence of their youngest son, their missing piece, living across the ocean with him.

  
Ian breathed out a sigh, deeper than she had heard in a long time. “Thank ye.”

“Ye should ken I’m no’ afraid,” she stated, her gaze unwavering.

“I ken.” He was quiet a moment, his face momentarily obscured by darkness. “Ye should ken I’m no’ afraid, either.”

She nodded. “I ken.”

Suddenly, he was overcome with a rattling sound, and he erupted into a violent coughing fit. Jenny scrambled for a clean, scented handkerchief, holding it up to his nose and mouth. Coughs were supposed to clear cobwebs in the chest; his, instead, reopened wounds. She held him til it was done, her body stiff, unwilling to let him see how much the sound and sight of blood unsettled her, frightened her. Because - she was afraid. The very marrow of her bones shook with fear of the loss of Ian; she felt to her very essence the gaping maw of absence and sorrow.

He settled back into the bed and opened his arms to her. Crawling into them, feeling childlike, she nestled into his body, taking stock of how it felt different, how it was the same.

With a sweep of her hands across his torso, she could sense his life fading away.

Ian was dying.

“What will ye do when I am gone, Janet?” he asked.

“What do ye mean?” she asked carefully, buying time. Precious time.

“What’s next? Ye must ha’ thought about it.”  

At her silence, after a pop of a log in the fire, he turned into her, his legs tangling with hers, her nightshift rucking up at the movement. A way he had thoughtlessly held her for years.  

“Jenny.” He brought her face up to his. “Ye’ll leave me to wonder?”

“No,” she said. “Only, I havena given it much thought, beyond how things will change. If I try to plan, I dinna get far along in it.”

He smiled sadly as she saw his pulse skitter in his throat. He was afraid, too.

“I’m no’ afraid,” she repeated, as if saying it again would make it true. “I’m only… sad.” A short word, a three letter word, not enough to express what she meant. She pressed a hand over his heart.

“I’m sad, too, _mo nighean_.” He placed a hand over hers, large and knobbed at the knuckles, his fingers long and white. “I willna see the day when yer hair goes all white. Yer mam and da both gone afore that time. Makes it hard to picture in my mind.” His other hand swept through the strands at her temple.

She took a deep shuddering breath. “I dinna want to live that long beyond ye. Dinna ask that of me.”

“Oh, but I do. Promise me, _mo chridhe_. That ye willna sit and wait for death. That ye willna wish it will hasten itself just to be with me. You are my heart; as long as you live, I live.”

Her eyes burned and her voice cracked on her next question. “And if it were me instead? What would ye do?”

He wheezed with an impending cough, his bone-sharp frame shaking with the effort to suppress it. Her hand still on his heart, her fingers tightened their grip as his hand did the same, pressing her to him. He would not cough, not now - holding his wife was more important.

Then, a confession spilled from Jenny. “Ian,” she whispered, barely audible.“I dinna think I can bear our home without ye in it. To be in the kitchen and no’ have you to make parritch for, to milk the goats and no’ hear you talking to the horses in the barn, to walk the fields I've kent my whole life and no' catch sight of yer gait coming down the road to me. I canna stand the idea of counting the headstones: Willie and Ma and Rabbie, Da, Caitlin and -- yours.” She took a deep breath, the movements of her body swift, smooth; uninhibited like the roll of water. “I want to leave Lallybroch.”

“Oh, _mo graidh_ ,” he nearly wept. “Yes. Go.” He kissed her eyelids. “Tell me. Where would ye go?”

She swallowed, and it was a moment before she spoke, feeling the ground quake beneath her, standing on the verge of breaking. “Maybe France, with Michael. Or-- Jamie. Maybe Jamie would take me in America.”

“America?” Ian repeated, faint surprise folding itself into a resigned happiness. He reached up to gently hold her face in his hands.

Jenny felt the approaching abyss, as deep and wide as the ocean between Lallybroch and the New World. “This willna be home anymore.”

“Aye,” he agreed, his voice barely more than a whisper. He was still holding her face, tangled together in their bed.

“But, _mo graidh_ ,” she breathed. “Without ye, I should never ken a home again.”

He took a shaky breath that had nothing to do with his illness, his eyes shining in the dark. The pads of his fingers drifted over her cheekbones, her lips. Memorizing.

  
He moved towards her and planted a soft kiss on her mouth. “ _Mo nighean dubh_ ,” he murmured. “If ye think death or oceans will stop me from being with ye, you are a fool.” He touched her chest, above her heart. “I will be with ye always.”


End file.
